The voice assistants of today are closer than ever to the sci-fi ideal of the all-knowing computer that we've been dreaming about for decades. But the way that users are interacting with them isn't just with voice search - it's with voice commands. How are these different, and what can you do to optimize for them?

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The dream of an ultimate personal assistant isn’t a farfetched sci-fi fantasy like the interactive computing systems in Star Trek. It’s technology available today already being applied to search engines.

At the inaugural Ayima Insights digital marketing conference, Ayima co-founder Rob Kerry gave us his insights into how the field of search is currently developing, and what the future may hold in 2016 and beyond.

As of 2014 we know 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis. Now with virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and voice recognition technology from Shazam and SoundHound, the number of users adopting voice search is only increasing, and the technology for understanding humans is advancing as well.

In the last six years of owning a smartphone and all of its intrinsic technical bells and whistles, I have used its voice recognition software only once. This was a request to Siri to, “Open the pod bay doors HAL.”